Chapter 78: Resonance of Pain, the Madwoman's Waltz
Deep in the forest, the smell of rot hung so thick in the air it felt almost wet.
It was the unmistakable stench that followed the incarnation of a Special Grade cursed object, a foul blend of blood, decay, and something old enough to make the skin crawl.
Nobara nearly gagged.
It was not fear.
It was offense.
She stared at the creature standing opposite her, the grotesque man with a second face growing from his back and nothing on his body but a pair of briefs, and her expression twisted in pure disgust.
"Hey, you disgusting freak."
She pointed her hammer at him.
"Couldn't you at least put on some clothes before showing up to fight? You look like public indecency came to life."
The reaction was immediate.
Eso's expression warped with murderous rage.
Because she had seen it.
The face on his back.
That hideous, hidden thing was one of the deepest taboos of the Death Painting brothers, something they would rather kill over than let anyone acknowledge.
His veins bulged.
The huge face on his back twitched and swelled like it had come alive.
"I'll kill you!"
His scream ripped through the forest.
"I'll kill you! I'll kill you!"
Dark blood spilled from his back, but instead of falling, it rose into the air. It twisted, thickened, and took shape above him, defying gravity as it condensed into a pair of massive skeletal wings made entirely of blood.
[Cursed Technique: Wing King.]
Moonlight fell across those bright crimson wings, making them gleam with an eerie, wet shine. Every "feather" was a compressed blade of poisonous blood, dense with decay.
Then they moved.
Swish!
The wings beat once, and the night filled with a storm of blood.
Countless droplets shot toward Nobara like arrows, carving through the air in a suffocating barrage. At the same time, Kechizu flanked from the side, his frog like body swelling as he spat out streams of highly corrosive blood that sprayed across the battlefield.
The brothers coordinated seamlessly.
One from above.
One from the side.
No openings.
No blind spots.
Every escape route was sealed.
"Watch out!"
Yuji shot forward like a released spring, his body tearing through the underbrush. He could take risks. As Sukuna's vessel, his resistance to poison far surpassed that of an ordinary human.
Nobara could not.
Even one clean hit might ruin her ability to fight.
She twisted sideways, narrowly avoiding the first volley.
Not all of it.
Splat.
Several drops of purple tinged blood struck her arm.
White smoke hissed up instantly.
The pain came a split second later.
It was sharp.
Hot.
Vicious enough to make her whole body seize.
Eso saw it and laughed.
Kechizu laughed too.
The sound of it was ugly.
"That's Rot!"
Eso's grin widened grotesquely.
"Once it touches you, the curse will spread through your body! Flowers of decay will bloom from your flesh until you rot into pus!"
They expected screaming.
Collapse.
Panic.
Instead, Nobara looked down at the spreading pattern on her arm, at the creeping mark blooming through her skin like a poisoned rose, and then slowly lifted her head.
She was smiling.
Not just smiling.
Laughing.
Louder than they were.
Harder.
Crazier.
The sound of it made both brothers freeze.
There was no fear in her eyes.
Only excitement.
A fever bright, hair raising kind of excitement that bordered on madness.
"Pain?"
Nobara's lips pulled back.
"That's it?"
She lifted her injured arm, examining it like she was judging someone else's problem.
"Compared to finding out my favorite salon shut down without notice, this is barely even annoying."
Her eyes blazed.
In that moment, under the moonlight, she looked beautiful and terrifying in equal measure.
A madwoman.
A girl who had decided that if the game was pain, then she would play it better than anyone.
"You want to play with curses?"
She laughed again, wiped blood from the corner of her mouth, and raised one of her nails.
"Fine."
Her voice dropped.
"Let's see who screams louder."
Without hesitation, Nobara drove the long nail straight through her own poisoned arm.
Thunk!
The sound was sickening.
Yuji's eyes widened.
Even Eso and Kechizu recoiled.
Nobara didn't so much as flinch.
Instead, cursed energy surged through the nail, into the wound, and then outward through the connection carried in their blood.
[Cursed Technique: Resonance.]
Thoom.
The sound did not ring through the forest.
It rang through the soul.
It was like an invisible hammer striking some giant buried bell, the vibration bypassing flesh and bone to slam directly into the core of its target.
"Aaaagh!"
Eso screamed.
So did Kechizu.
Both brothers convulsed at once, as though a white hot blade had been thrust through their chests. The pain was not ordinary. It was reflected agony, pure and merciless, carried back through the curse that linked them to Nobara.
The harder she struck herself, the more violently the recoil tore into them.
Eso clutched at his chest, wings trembling.
Kechizu staggered backward, shrieking in confusion and pain.
"What is wrong with this woman?!"
Kechizu's voice cracked.
"Is she insane?!"
"Yes," Nobara said, breathing hard, blood running down her arm around the embedded nail. "That's the point."
Eso's technique faltered.
The vast crimson wings behind him flickered and began to lose shape.
And the moment that happened, Nobara snapped her head toward Yuji.
"Yuji!"
Her grin was savage.
"Now!"
He was already moving.
No need to tell him twice.
Yuji tore across the ground with his fists clenched, eyes burning with fury. He had seen Nobara drive a nail into her own flesh without hesitation. Seen her turn herself into bait and weapon at the same time. Seen that lunatic resolve and understood exactly what it meant.
Don't waste this.
Cursed energy surged through his body.
It aligned.
Compressed.
Then detonated at the moment his fist drove forward.
Black lightning erupted around his knuckles.
[Black Flash.]
Boom!
The punch landed squarely on Eso's face.
For a fraction of a second, the world itself seemed to freeze.
Then space distorted, and a violent eruption of black and red tore outward from the impact point. Eso's head snapped back with a sickening crack, and his body flew like a cannonball through the trees, smashing through trunk after trunk.
Yuji was already on him before he hit the ground.
Second punch.
Third punch.
More black lightning ripped across the darkness.
Each strike twisted the air around it.
Each blow drove Eso deeper into ruin.
This was not a fight anymore.
It was a beating.
A merciless, full bodied suppression of a Death Painting by a boy who had been taught how to hit hard enough to shake the world.
"Brother!"
Eso spat black blood and tried to turn toward Kechizu even as Yuji hammered him deeper into the forest floor.
He knew he was losing.
Worse, he knew he might already be finished.
But that didn't matter.
Not if Kechizu still had a chance to live.
"Kechizu!"
He forced the words out through blood and pain.
"Run!"
He tried to summon cursed energy one last time, desperately attempting to force his technique back into shape and cover his younger brother's retreat.
Too late.
Because Nobara was already there.
She stood in front of Kechizu with blood running down her arm and a smile too beautiful to be sane. Her hammer was raised high over her head, the last nail poised between her fingers.
"Run?"
She tilted her head.
"Where exactly do you think you're running to?"
Kechizu stumbled back, wings twitching uselessly.
Nobara's voice went colder.
"You came all the way to Tokyo."
She lifted the nail and aligned it with his chest.
"You don't get to leave empty handed."
One more strike.
That was all it would take.
With Resonance already anchored through the connection of blood and curse, the next blow would likely shatter the hearts of both brothers at once.
The outcome was already decided.
Eso saw it.
And for the first time, despair passed openly across his face.
He could do nothing.
Not anymore.
He closed his eyes.
Then, just as Nobara's hammer was about to fall, a hand appeared.
No killing intent.
No violence.
Just sudden, impossible presence.
A long, steady hand reached in from the side and caught Nobara's wrist before the blow could descend.
The motion was gentle.
Light enough to seem almost careless.
And yet it carried an absolute strength that stopped her strike dead.
The entire battlefield seemed to pause.
Yuji looked up.
Nobara whipped her head around in shock, fury, and confusion.
"Yami?!"
Moonlight fell across his face.
He stood there calm as still water, one hand loosely gripping Nobara's wrist, his gaze already fixed past her.
At the brothers.
At Eso, broken and half buried among shattered trees.
At Kechizu, trembling and trying to shield his brother even now.
"What are you doing?!" Nobara snapped. "Let go!"
Her breathing was ragged, eyes bright with battle fury.
"They're curses!"
Yami did not answer immediately.
He simply looked at the two brothers in silence.
There was no softness in his posture.
No hesitation in the hand resting near Shiranui's hilt.
But the killing intent everyone expected from him never came.
When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet.
"Curses?"
His eyes remained on the Death Paintings.
"Maybe."
Then his gaze sharpened.
"But right now…"
He released Nobara's wrist and stepped past her, drawing the pitch black blade from his waist in one fluid motion. The steel reflected moonlight like cold water.
The tip angled toward the brothers.
Not as a strike.
As judgment.
"…they look more human than most humans do."
Eso's body trembled.
Kechizu bared his teeth, still trying to protect him even while terrified.
Yami watched them both.
Then he spoke again.
"In this world…"
The night wind shifted through the trees.
"Some things matter more than life and death."
His voice did not rise.
It did not need to.
"Isn't that right?"
.....
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